On a kayaking trip recently we tried to help out a guy with an engine
fire. We stopped just after he had pulled over, but the hood was
already too hot to be fully opened. It could be popped to the upper latch
on the hood release, but not further. I had a 10A5BC extinguisher
and I aimed it into the slot under the hood and emptied it as I moved
around the perimeter of the hood. The extiguisher sprayed for about
10 seconds. This was enough to subdue the flames, but they soon
came up again. A second car with an extinguisher stopped, and
we repeated the process with the same effect: a short break in the
flames. More cars stopped, but nobody else managed to do
anything useful. By the time the fire brigade came about 10min later the
whole car was in flames and there was nothing to save.

The poor guy had just bought it, and this happened when he was out
on his first drive.

Some observations:

1/ In this case something flammable was feeding the fire, most
likely the fuel pump was still pumping fuel onto the overheated
engine. Hence, attempts to stop the fire with small fire extiguishers
were futile.

2/ It is not always easy to get access to were the fire is.

3/ Bystanders may not act in the most rational way and may
have strange ideas of what is to be done (watched too much TV?)

Martin
(Now at Johns Hopkins)
--
Westy 1.9l Turbo Diesel
Quantum 1.6l Turbo Diesel

New and used parts for sale, gas and Diesel:

    http://www.cs.yale.edu/~jag/vw/forsale.html

Martin Jagersand                 email: jag@cs.yale.edu
Computer Science Department             jag@cs.rochester.edu
Yale University

        Slow down and visit the VW diesel Westy page:
          WWW: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/vw
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